- Bitcoin’s $80,000 Break Wipes Out $301 Million in Short Positions
Source: Binance
“Bitcoin’s break above $80,000 caught the crypto derivatives market badly positioned for the third time in recent weeks, triggering $370 million in total liquidations across 97,235 traders in 24 hours with short sellers absorbing the majority of the damage — a pattern that is beginning to look less like a series of isolated events and more like a structural feature of the current market. Bitcoin briefly tagged $80,594 in early Asian trading Monday — its highest print since January 31 — before pulling back to trade around $79,851 at time of writing. Of the $370 million in total liquidations, $301.93 million came from short positions, according to CoinGlass data, with shorts liquidated at roughly four times the rate of longs. Bitcoin alone accounted for $179 million of the wipeout, with Ether traders contributing $95 million.” (05/04/26)
- Cape Verde: Cruise ship at center of suspected deadly hantavirus outbreak refused permission to dock
Source: NBC News
“The cruise ship at the center of a deadly outbreak of hantavirus has been refused permission to dock, with 149 people still on board — two of them seriously ill. The virus is suspected to have killed three people and sickened three more, with one patient hospitalized in critical condition. … The remaining passengers, who are from 23 different countries, including 17 Americans, are required to follow strict precautionary measures, including isolation and medical monitoring, the cruise operator said. The west African nation of Cape Verde said it had decided not to let the cruise ship, the Hondius, dock at the port of Praia as a precautionary measure, Reuters reported. The cruise operator, Oceanwide Expeditions, said in a statement Monday that the ship may sail from Cape Verde to Las Palmas or Tenerife in the Canary Islands and dock there.” (05/04/26)
- Iraq: Court sentences four to prison for promoting banned Baath Party
Source: ABC News
“An Iraqi court on Monday sentenced four people to six years in prison on charges of promoting the ideas of the banned Baath Party led by former leader Saddam Hussein. The Karkh Criminal Court said in a statement that those convicted were found in possession of the banned materials on their cellphones in Kirkuk province during 2025 and 2026. After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq toppled Saddam’s autocratic rule, the country implemented a broad de-Baathification policy aimed at removing the influence of the Baath Party from state institutions.” (05/04/26)
- Iran: Regime thugs kill three over January protests
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“Iran[‘s regime has killed] three men charged in connection with political protests this January, authorities have said, the latest in a wave of hangings against the backdrop of the war against the US and Israel. Iranian authorities have carried out [killings] on a near-daily basis in recent weeks in what activists have denounced as a bid to instil fear in society at a time of international and domestic tension. Mehdi Rassouli, Mohammad Reza Miri and Ebrahim Dolatabadi, all considered political prisoners by human rights organisations, were [killed] after being convicted over unrest in the eastern city of Mashhad in January, the judiciary’s Mizan news agency announced on Monday.” (05/04/26)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/04/iran-executes-men-january-anti-regime-protests
- GameStop makes daring $56 billion bid for eBay, hoping to rival Amazon
Source: CNN
“GameStop has offered to buy ecommerce giant eBay for $55.5 billion, a tie-up that the video game retailer’s boss believes could produce a ‘legit competitor’ to Amazon. The offer comes amid something of a revival at eBay, which has pushed to reinvent itself in the face of rising competition from the likes of Walmart, Amazon, Shein and Facebook Marketplace. GameStop — which became a household name during the meme stock craze of 2021 — has offered $125 per share for eBay, half in cash and half in stock, the company announced Sunday. That represents a 46% premium to eBay’s closing share price on February 4, the day GameStop started building a 5% stake in the company.” (05/04/26)
- Rubio expected to meet with Pope Leo amid Trump’s clash with pontiff on Iran
Source: Washington Post
“Secretary of State Marco Rubio is slated to travel to Italy to meet with Pope Leo XIV this week, according to a senior Vatican official, marking the first high-ranking encounter between the pontiff and a top administration official since President Donald Trump issued withering criticism of the Chicago-born pope last month. The visit comes amid a deterioration in relations between the United States and the Vatican, as well as Italy, with observers viewing the trip as an attempt to patch up troubled ties. Rubio, a prominent Catholic in the administration, is expected to meet with Leo on Thursday, according to the Vatican official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a meeting that has not yet been made public.” (05/04/26)
- Austria: Regime expels Russian diplomats over alleged spying
Source: United Press International
“Authorities in Austria have expelled three members of the Russian embassy staff for suspected spying, Austria’s foreign minister said Monday. Austrian Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger said the diplomats were suspected of using a ‘forest of antennae’ on the roof of the Russian embassy in Vienna to collect illicit data, The Guardian reported. The equipment was allegedly used to collect the data from organizations using satellite internet. … The three suspected spies have left the country, which has now expelled 14 Russian diplomats since 2020, The Guardian reported. Russian officials called this most recent decision ‘outrageous’ and ‘unjustified’ and promised retaliation.” (05/04/26)
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2026/05/04/austria-russian-diplomats-expelled/7991777914676/
- The tyranny of “public health” knows no bounds
Source: spiked
by Christopher Snowdon“Traditionally, a public-health problem was something that damaged or threatened the health of a large number of people without their consent and could only be addressed through collective action. Industrial pollution, cholera in the water supply, infectious disease, that kind of thing. If you walk around infected with SARS, it affects me in a way that you walking around with obesity doesn’t. That is what makes it a public-health issue rather than a mere lifestyle choice. … Over time, ‘public health’ has been redefined to include activities like smoking and it is now virtually a catch-all term. … As we saw during the pandemic, politicians can get away with nearly anything so long as it involves ‘public health.’” (05/04/26)
- The Price of Tariffs and the US War on Iran
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger“The Watson family has been dairy farming since before the Civil War. But no longer. [Brad] Watson recently had to auction off all of his dairy cows, each of which had a name that Watson’s children had given them. The reason that Watson lost all of his daily cows? Two reasons: Trump’s tariffs and Trump’s war on Iran, which have caused fertilizer costs to soar. Barely making it as it was, the tariffs and the soaring fertilizer costs sent the Watson dairy operation over the cliff. … the Watson story is just one of many across the United States. There are countless other people who are suffering the consequences of Trump’s tariff sprees and his illegal war of aggression on Iran. Only a few of these horror stories will end up in the mainstream press.” (05/04/25)
https://www.fff.org/2026/05/04/the-price-of-tariffs-and-the-u-s-war-on-iran/
- From “Unconditional Surrender” to “Please Make a Deal”
Source: The Dispatch
by Mike Nelson“While we should not trust any public pronouncements made by the Iranians (nor should our government take private ones at face value either), the regime has effectively acted in keeping with the perception it wishes to create: Iran’s leaders are not impatient for negotiations, nor do they seem willing to make accommodations in advance of any, while simultaneously demanding preconditions from the United States. The only indications of Iranian eagerness to seek peaceful resolution come from Trump — who has a less than firm relationship with the truth — claiming that the Iranians have told him privately they are desperate to give in to each of our demands. That would strain credulity under any circumstances, but especially after the president has made many, many claims of Iranian surrender or concession over the course of the nine-week conflict, all of which have proven to be demonstrably false.” (05/04/26)
- Data Center Panic Gets Electricity Prices Wrong
Source: The Daily Economy
by Julia R Cartwright“The so-called ‘AI race’ is propelling stock markets to new highs even as geopolitical turbulence rattles investors. Artificial intelligence may prove to be the rare technological revolution capable of generating real growth despite the headwinds of tariffs and misguided industrial policy. Yet the data centers powering this next generation of innovation have become a flashpoint for public anxiety. Maine has outright banned new large data center construction, and average Americans are increasingly convinced that these facilities are to blame for rising electricity bills. The statewide data, however, tell a different story. Newly published research finds no meaningful link between the number of data centers in a state and its electricity prices and points instead to a far less glamorous culprit: bad state energy policy.” (05/04/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/data-center-panic-gets-electricity-prices-wrong/
- The Subversive Entrepreneur
Source: Underthrow
by Max Borders“An entrepreneur casts a certain kind of spell. He brings resources, people, and capital together in a way that enables him to make others better off, so they will make him better off. He is a master of mutualism. His magic lies in his ability to carry all this out sustainably, imposing no costs on anyone other than his partners in mutual gain, all within the Law of Consent. This distinguishes him from a political entrepreneur who practices dark dialectics. That means, somewhere in his spellcasting, the political entrepreneur colludes with those who have seized the authority to compel others. Dark dialectics is the art of mingling persuasion and compulsion — like money and power — to dominate. A subversive entrepreneur casts his spells in dangerous territory, where political entrepreneurs and powerful authorities, wielding monopolies on violence, roam the land. This makes the subversive entrepreneur the rarest among entrepreneurial spellcasters.” (05/04/26)
https://underthrow.substack.com/p/the-subversive-entrepreneur
- Revolutionaries without a Cause
Source: American Greatness
by Stephen Soukup“In the week-plus since the latest attempt on President Trump’s life, many on the Right and in the political Center are, at long last, waking up to the possibility that the political opposition today is not entirely normal. It’s not unprecedented either, but it’s far from what we have come to expect in the so-called ‘civilized’ world. As the polymath and public intellectual Eric Weinstein put it on Twitter/X, ‘These aren’t deranged liberals. They are normalized revolutionaries.’ By now, the story of how these revolutionaries came to be normalized is well-worn.” (05/04/26)
https://amgreatness.com/2026/05/04/revolutionaries-without-a-cause/
- Moving Past Gerrymandering
Source: ProSocial Libertarians
by Andrew Jason Cohen“All borders, including those of voting districts and nation-states, are legal constructs. Legal constructs serve a purpose, of course. That a country extends to the ocean tells us something, but without a legal ruling about how far into the ocean it controls, we risk repeated skirmishes at sea, for example. The same is true of voting districts. Should Joe’s vote count in district 2? Or one of the other 5? Should he be allowed to decide for himself? Perhaps he’d choose 2 because the polling place is closest to his home or his kids’ school. Perhaps he’d choose 3 because the polling place is closest to his office. Perhaps he’d vary by year. It’s apparently important to people — and is obviously important to the duopoly — that people only vote in set areas. Do you actually care about that? Is it really problematic to let people vote where they choose?” (05/04/26)
https://prosociallibertarians.substack.com/p/moving-past-gerrymandering
- Support Us Iran Midterms Justice War on Gaza Unmasking ICE Chilling Dissent About Support Us Trump’s Killing Spree Isn’t Stopping the Flow of Drugs Into the US
Source: The Intercept
by Nick Turse“The Pentagon claims that attacks on civilian boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific have severely curtailed the import of illegal drugs to the United States. And President Donald Trump says this has saved more than 1 million American lives. Experts call these assertions laughable and reporting by The Intercept shows that claims by the White House and War Department are baseless, phony, or both.” (05/04/26)
https://theintercept.com/2026/05/04/trump-boat-strikes-fentanyl-cocaine-drug-supply/
- A World in Trumple Deep (And We Are All His Apprentices Now)
Source: TomDispatch
by Tom Engelhardt“Unlike every other TomDispatch piece, this one won’t be broken up with section titles for a simple reason. It’s all about Donald J. Trump and when it comes to him, in this strange world of ours, no one ever really gets a break. In that context, here’s my advice to you: Don’t get old. For years, I managed not to do so, but unfortunately that’s all over now and I’m increasingly an old man. In fact, I’m not quite two years older than Donald J. Trump.” (05/03/26)
- Not All Leaks Are Created Equal
Source: The American Conservative
by Peter Van Buren“Anonymized political hits are a different beast from principled whistleblowing.” (05/04/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/not-all-leaks-are-created-equal/
- Washington’s Debt Party Is About to Crash Your Budget
Source: Town Hall
by Jay Rogers“Picture yourself at the kitchen table on a Saturday morning, coffee getting cold, sorting through the mail. Among the usual suspects (credit card statements, HOA notices, something from the DMV that is probably not good news), you find a bill you did not ask for. The federal government has quietly added a line item to your household tab: $18,000 a year. No vote. No debate. Just arithmetic catching up with decades of bipartisan borrowing without consequences. That is precisely what the Brookings Institution’s 2026 fiscal chart book shows is required to keep the debt-to-GDP ratio capped at its current level through 2036. Budget fellow Jessica Riedl calculates that stabilization demands an extra $2.6 trillion in annual revenue by that year. Spread across approximately 144 million American households, the arithmetic is brutal: roughly $18,000 per household, per year.” (05/04/26)
- Pay Day: Learn Who Cashed In When Trump Went to War
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Thomas Karat“The neocons got their war. The question every taxpayer and every voter who believed Trump’s promises should be asking is: who else got what they wanted? The answer is not difficult to find. It is sitting in earnings calls, stock filings, and futures trading records. Washington does not even bother to hide it anymore.” (05/04/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/pay-day-learn-who-cashed-in-when-trump-went-to-war
- Trump: American Gangster for Capitalism [sic]
Source: Foreign Policy In Focus
by Edward Hunt“Some lawmakers have grown so alarmed by the Trump administration’s actions in Latin America that they are beginning to accuse the administration of gangsterism. Representative Stephen Lynch (D-MA) saw the possibility of gangsterism at the start of the second Trump administration when he warned that the United States could ‘join the ranks of gangster nations,’ but there is a growing sense in Congress that the day has arrived. At a congressional hearing last month, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) asserted that the Trump administration is exploiting the US military to take Latin American resources for US corporations. Castro seemingly channeled the anti-war critiques of Smedley Butler, the US military hero of the early 20th century, who condemned war as a racket and lamented his exploitation as a racketeer for capitalism.” (05/04/26)
- AI Companies Learn the Word No
Source: Reason
by Katherine Mangu-Ward“One of the more encouraging developments in artificial intelligence is that some of the people building it have started acting like it might be dangerous. Not in the Skynet sense or the HAL 9000 sense or even the ‘oops, it deleted all my emails’ sense, though AI might be dangerous in all of those ways too. The question is whether the latest models are dangerous to infrastructure, dangerous to privacy, dangerous to security, and dangerous to the blurry line between public and private. For years, Big Tech has been heavy on the gas, light on the brakes — and we have all benefited tremendously, even as angry debates about the downsides have raged. But with AI, at least in a few notable cases, the companies themselves have begun doing something unusual. They have started saying no.” (for publication 06/26)
https://reason.com/2026/05/04/ai-companies-learn-the-word-no/
- AI Companies Aren’t Evil. But They Are Reckless.
Source: Persuasion
by Julie Guirado“Earlier this year, a prominent company with millions of customers announced a major product upgrade — albeit with one little catch. If this new product was released to the public, the company said, it could be used to disrupt — and perhaps destroy — civilizational infrastructure, from financial markets to transportation systems to power and water utilities. But fear not! The company hastened to reassure the public that it had the situation under control. The company would decide, on its own terms, what the world needed to know, who should be called in to contain the problem, and how much gratitude the rest of us should feel for being spared a catastrophe we never knew was coming. No public accountability or government intervention required. This, of course, is the story of Anthropic and its latest AI model.” (05/04/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-case-for-ai-regulation
- The Myth of “Voluntary” ESG
Source: Law & Liberty
by Allen Mendenhall & Daniel Sutter“The ESG movement — Environmental, Social, and Governance — achieved the rare feat of moving from business schools and boardrooms into mainstream public and political discourse. What began as a technical framework for evaluating firm-level risk has, over time, evolved into a sweeping set of expectations about what corporations owe not only shareholders but also society at large. In that evolution, ESG has taken on meanings far beyond its original analytic purpose, becoming a vehicle for advancing broader social priorities through financial markets.” (05/04/26)
- When America Chose Empire
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by George Ford Smith“In 1901, on far-away Balangiga — a village in Eastern Samar of the Philippines — an American general gave an order that stripped away any notion of ‘civilizing’ or ‘Christianizing’ a foreign people: ‘Make it a howling wilderness.’ General Jacob H. Smith’s command — accompanied by the instruction to ‘kill everyone over ten’ — was not an aberration. It was consistent with a decision made only a few years earlier about America becoming one of the ‘great’ nations. The government would abandon its anti-imperial tradition and join the ranks of empire.” (05/04/26)
- Cyberattack Exposes Risks of Policy-Driven Healthcare Concentration
Source: The Daily Economy
by Vance Ginn“When one provider goes offline, others should step in. Mississippi’s experience shows how certificate-of-need laws prevent that — and why reform matters for public health.” (05/04/26)
- This Energy Crisis Is Undoing the Last Ones
Source: Foreign Policy
by Giuliana Chamedes“Unlike earlier oil crises, which strengthened Western unity, the current situation is fragmenting it. It has become clear that the United States and Israel are not able to protect the Gulf from Iran’s attacks. Horizontal agreements are accordingly being negotiated everywhere one looks: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates with Ukraine, Canada with China, and European powers with independent countries in the region. The United States faces particular challenges. Under President Donald Trump, the country has tired out its erstwhile allies, who are looking elsewhere for more reliable trade partners.” (05/04/26)
- Regulators risk destroying local TV by blocking key media merger
Source: Fox News
by Steve Forbes“The Nexstar-Tegna transaction is exactly the kind of pro-growth, common-sense deal Washington should applaud, not bury under a mountain of legal briefs, bureaucratic nostrums and political posturing. These two companies are major owners of local television stations. For years, America’s local broadcasters have been battered by forces far larger than any single station group: Big Tech, streaming behemoths, social-media platforms, cord-cutting, cable fragmentation and the steady siphoning of advertising dollars away from local outlets. The old world of three networks, a handful of hometown stations and a captive evening-news audience has long gone the way of the dinosaurs. Local television today is not operating in a sheltered village. It is competing in a global, fiercely competitive marketplace. That is why the Nexstar-Tegna deal matters.” (05/04/26)
- US quest for superweapons runs into reality
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Mark Thompson“For every successful dream of a new military technology that ends up working as advertised, there are 100 nightmares into which U.S. taxpayers are forced to pour money with little to show for it. The challenge, of course, is to pluck the winners from the losers before the billions have been spent.” (05/04/26)
- Too Old to Fight Jury Tyranny?
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Angelo Monaco“There are many negative ways to describe the United States Postal Service, but I never considered my mail-delivery person to be an instrument of government oppression. That changed when I retrieved my mail recently and discovered a summons from my home county demanding that I appear for ‘Jury Duty.’” (05/04/26)
https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/too-old-to-fight-jury-tyranny/
- Reason Roundtable, 05/04/26
Source: Reason
“Why Do Big City Democrats Keep Electing Socialists?” (05/04/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/05/04/why-do-big-city-democrats-keep-electing-socialists/
- Ron Paul Liberty Report, 05/04/26
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“Is ‘Project Freedom’ Just Another Trump Scam?” (05/04/26)
- Rising, 05/04/26
Source: The Hill
“Robby Soave gives his radar on Spirit Airlines shutting down its operations, which he argues is due to the Biden administration and lawmakers like Sen. Elizabeth Warren blocking a merger between Spirit and JetBlue.” (05/04/26)
- The Kyle Anzalone Show, 05/04/26
Source: Libertarian Institute
“Dave DeCamp: The Ceasefire Is Dying, Israel Waits for Trump’s Greenlight to Restart War.” (05/04/26)
- Finding Freedom, 05/04/26
Source: Lions of Liberty
“The Truth About Chronic Disease with Dr. Darrell Wolfe.” (05/04/26)
https://www.lionsofliberty.com/episodes/ff-the-truth-about-chronic-disease-with-dr-darrell-wolfe
- Politico Playbook Audio Briefing, 05/04/26
Source: Politico
“‘Warning signs are flashing’: GOP anxiety builds with six months to midterms.” (05/04/26)
- EconTalk, 05/04/26
Source: EconTalk
“Golfing Alone (with Gary Belsky).” (05/04/26)
- The Daily Blast With Greg Sargent, 05/04/26
Source: The New Republic
“Trump Blurts Out Damning Admission of Iran Blunder as GOP Panic Grows.” (05/04/26)
https://newrepublic.com/article/209885/trump-blurts-damning-admission-iran-blunder-gop-panic-grows
- The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, 05/04/26
Source: The Dispatch
“Gettin’ Wonky on the Unitary Executive | Interview: Charlie Cooke.” (05/04/26)